Thwaites Glacier on the edge of West Antarctica is one of the planet’s fastest-moving glaciers. Research shows that it is sliding unstoppably into the ocean, mainly due to warmer seawater lapping at its underside.
But the details of its collapse remain uncertain. The details are necessary to provide a timeline for when to expect 2 feet of global sea level rise, and when this glacier’s loss will help destabilize the much larger West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Chelsea Wood, an assistant professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, has been named an Early Career Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). The ESA chooses members for this distinction who have made or show potential to make outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by the society. Such contributions can include those who advance or apply ecological knowledge in academics, government, nonprofit organizations and the private sector through outstanding contributions to research, education and/or outreach.
Every other week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the past two weeks, seven new articles co-authored by members of the College were added to the Web of Science database. They include articles about urban ornithology, blue marlins, and more. Read on!
Recognizing the signs of a predator can mean the difference between living to see another day and becoming another critter’s midday snack. All prey animals, whether a swift-footed deer or a slow-moving snail, use cues from their environment to sense the presence of a threat. It’s what keeps them alive — or at least gives them a shot at getting away.
All animals, from humans to whales to sea cucumbers, need vitamin B-12. But only certain microbes can make the complex, cobalt-containing molecule. For land dwellers a main source is the microbes that thrive in animals’ guts, which is why beef is such a good source of B-12. Shellfish also accumulate a lot of B-12.
In the oceans, the source of their vitamins for some marine organisms is sometimes mysterious.
One of Alaska’s most abundant freshwater fish species is altering its breeding patterns in response to climate change. This could impact the ecology of northern lakes, which already acutely feel the effects of a changing climate.
That’s the main finding of a recent University of Washington study published in Global Change Biology that analyzed reproductive patterns of three-spine stickleback fish over half a century in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.
Conditions suitable to support complex life may have developed in Earth’s oceans — and then faded — more than a billion years before life truly took hold, a new University of Washington-led study has found.
The findings, based on using the element selenium as a tool to measure oxygen in the distant past, may also benefit the search for signs of life beyond Earth.
Fishing communities can survive ― and even thrive ― as fish abundance and market prices shift if they can catch a variety of species and nimbly move from one fishery to the next.
These findings, published Jan. 16 in Nature Communications, draw upon 34 years of data collected in more than 100 fishing communities in Alaska that depend on fishing for livelihoods, cultural traditions and daily subsistence.
The ocean acidification expected as seawater absorbs increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will reverberate through the West Coast’s marine food web, but not necessarily in the ways you might expect, new research shows.
Dungeness crabs, for example, will likely suffer as their food sources decline. Dungeness crab fisheries, valued at about $220 million annually, may face a strong downturn over the next 50 years, according to research published today in the journal Global Change Biology.
A University of Washington oceanographer is chief scientist on a voyage in the waters around Antarctica as part of a major effort to monitor the Southern Ocean.
Stephen Riser, a UW professor of oceanography, embarked Dec. 24 as part of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling, or SOCCOM, project to collect better data about the planet’s most remote ocean.
The global climate is a complex machine in which some pieces are separate, yet others are connected. Scientists try to discover the connections to predict what will happen to our climate, especially in a future with more heat-trapping gases.
A dramatic pattern in our planet’s climate history involves paroxysms in Arctic temperatures. During the last ice age, tens of thousands of years ago, Greenland repeatedly warmed by about 10 degrees Celsius over just a few decades and then gradually cooled.
It has long been suspected that humans and the urban areas we create are having an important — and surprisingly current and ongoing — effect on evolution, which may have significant implications for the sustainability of global ecosystems.
A new multi-institution study led by the University of Washington that examines 1,600 global instances of phenotypic change — alterations to species’ observable traits such as size, development or behavior — shows more clearly than ever that urbanization is affecting the genetic makeup of species that are crucial to ecosystem health and success.
The annual migration of some beluga whales in Alaska is altered by sea ice changes in the Arctic, while other belugas do not appear to be affected.
A new study led by the University of Washington finds that as Arctic sea ice takes longer to freeze up each fall due to climate change, one population of belugas mirrors that timing and delays its migration south by up to one month.
Eelgrass, a marine plant crucial to the success of migrating juvenile salmon and spawning Pacific herring, is stable and flourishing in Puget Sound — despite a doubling of the region’s human population and significant shoreline development over the past several decades.
That finding surprised scientists who study eelgrass, which sprouts in the brackish waters close to shore and provides shelter and breeding habitat for fish and invertebrates.
Every other week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the past two weeks, nine new articles co-authored by members of the College were added to the Web of Science database. They include articles about moth invasions, human well-being, and more. Read on!